This Baby Sleep Site Personalized Sleep Consulting Review contains affiliate links which means I may receive a commission at no extra cost to you if you purchase after clicking my link. All opinions are my own.
I need to admit right off the bat that I am terrible at getting babies to sleep. My oldest child struggled to get to sleep at night and was up quite a bit, though he has slept pretty well since about 2-and-a-half. My second child learned how to put himself to sleep at about 5 months old, so bedtime was easy… but he has always woken up early. And by early I don’t mean 6 am– I mean anywhere from 3 am to 4:30 am. We called it good if he waited until 5 am to wake up.
For the longest time, we just dealt with it. But last fall, our situation started to get out out of control. My son, Eli, was not getting nearly enough sleep and was a tired, cranky mess. Not to mention my husband and I weren’t getting enough sleep, either!
I decided to sign up for some personalized sleep consulting from the Baby Sleep Site. In this review, I will share my experience with using their services and how my son is sleeping now.
Background Info
At the time of starting the sleep consulting, Eli was 2.5 years old. I was really worried we had let his early waking go on way too long. His early waking started somewhere between 11 and 12 months old, so we only got 6 months of decent sleep out of him.
Here is some info about Eli’s sleep quirks: If he is tired, he will go to sleep no problem. He loves going to sleep. He can fall asleep anywhere. Sounds like any parent’s dream, right?
Not really. While convenient at times, it made getting Eli on a new sleep schedule extremely difficult. I would step away for 2 minutes to start the dishwasher, and he would go find a corner to hide in so he could fall asleep without me bothering him.
We would go to a party at a friend’s house, and Eli would be playing with a group of kids. All of a sudden, one of the older kids would come up to me and say Eli needed me. I’d go downstairs to where all the kids were playing, and there he would be passed out in the middle of the playroom floor.
He could be sitting on my lap watching a TV show, and I would start to ask him questions about the show and he wouldn’t answer. I’d peek over his shoulder to look at him and realized he fell asleep at some point in time and I didn’t even notice. My oldest NEVER fell asleep to the TV, and in fact, TV contributed to a lot of his sleep issues.
On the other hand, Eli gets so relaxed while watching TV (whether we want him to or not) that he falls asleep quite often.
It was a bit bizarre. But just goes to show how tired he was all the time. Anyway, I decided to look at the sleep coaching options at the Baby Sleep Site to help us with our problem.
Sleep Consulting Options at the Baby Sleep Site
The Baby Sleep Site has many options available at a wide variety of price points to meet your needs.
Free Options
First of all, the Baby Sleep Site has some free articles available on their site that can help answer some basic sleep questions.
$ Options
The free articles are great, but they’re about what you would expect to receive for free.
To get deeper information, you can sign up as a VIP member and get access to tons of articles and e-books to essentially DIY your sleep plan.
Prices start at $49/month for this membership, though if you sign up for a quarterly or six-month membership, you can get a much cheaper membership price when broken down monthly. (For example, the 6-month pay plan breaks down to $20/month).
This membership is invaluable for those that have a baby on the way or a young baby at home. It helps you to make sure you are following best practices for setting baby up for success, even if they are too young to do any sleep training of any kind (gentle or otherwise). Becoming a member for even a few months will help you gain a lot of knowledge.
This VIP area is my favorite part of the Baby Sleep Site. However, if membership isn’t for you, you have the option to buy bundles of e-books and articles under certain topics.
$$-$$$ Options
If you find yourself needing more help (like I did), there are many different options you can explore on the Baby Sleep Site.
The first (cheapest) option for a customized plan is the Express Sleep Plan. You have options to add on one email or a phone call for an additional price. This might be a good option for someone that wants to get a better sleep schedule set up for their child, but are prepared to do the bulk of the problem-solving themselves.
The next option would be the Personalized Sleep Plans with email consulting (this is what I did). There are different levels available depending on how much you’re willing to spend and how much communication you would like to do. Most of the communication is done through email, but there is a package that includes phone options for those that would like to have a more direct conversation.
Because these are personalized plans, they come with a higher price tag.
The last level of support would be the Comprehensive Sleep Consultation packages. These packages include more phone time and unlimited emailing for 30 days.
Overall, I chose the Deluxe Email Package which included an evaluation of our sleep history, a personalized sleep plan, a day-to-day action plan, sleep log analysis, and four follow-up emails to be used within 6 months of purchase.
Time to Get Some Help!
Just before Thanksgiving 2019, I signed up for the deluxe email consulting package from the Baby Sleep Site. I had signed up for some sleep help about two years earlier with Eli when he was just a few months old, but I ended up not needing it because once Eli started daycare and got on a more rigid schedule, that helped him tenfold. He was an amazing sleeper from about 5 months old to 11 or 12 months.
But now we were struggling with fixing this early waking. We felt like we had tried everything. So once again, I signed up for some email consulting.
I gave all the background info of Eli’s typical schedule and detailed our issue to our sleep consultant. She gave us a ton of information about what a normal sleep schedule should look like at Eli’s age and gave us some guidelines to start following. With implementing a basic new sleep routine, we were supposed to keep a detailed sleep log so that the sleep consultant knew how to help troubleshoot.
More Challenges Than I Realized
As we started holding Eli to the new schedule and doing EVERYTHING we could to get him back to sleep at 3 am, we had so many challenges come up. None of this was easy.
If Eli woke at 3 am and never got back to sleep, it was almost impossible to get him to stay awake long enough to nap at his appropriate time.
We also found that if we DID get Eli back to sleep, it was almost impossible to get him to nap at his appropriate time because he didn’t feel tired enough.
If Eli didn’t nap, we were supposed to just keep him up and then put him to bed earlier. But then we would run into some of the issues I described earlier, like him falling asleep in a corner when I step away for 2 minutes to do dishes (or in the shopping cart at Target), again throwing EVERYTHING off.
None of this was easy, that’s for sure. However, we kept with it. Once we got over some of those initial bumps in the road, we started to see progress.
The Good & Bad of the Baby Sleep Site Email Consulting
The Baby Sleep Site helped our family and Eli is sleeping much better now than he was. However, Eli still struggles with early waking and goes to bed way too early. I’ll explain more about our experience here.
The Good
- The Sleep Consultants are knowledgeable and having their guidance for what is normal toddler sleep vs. abnormal is incredibly helpful.
- The Sleep Consultants are awesome at putting together an appropriate schedule for your child. It made me so much more confident when I was enforcing it. Before I wasn’t sure if what I was trying to enforce was right, so it made me more likely to second guess myself and switch things around too often.
- VIP members can get 20{9994046f29331ee04cc0b5e07eb28364315ea03ccc2f01b5a43e8b85b372d1e9} off express & personalized sleep plans and consultations.
- Returning clients can also receive a discount on new services.
The Bad
If you are going to use the Baby Sleep Site, I highly recommend opting for the unlimited plan unless you just have a little issue you want clarification on. However, the average person is not dropping hundreds of dollars on a sleep consultant to ask one question. Most likely, you are trying to work on something you will need lots of help with.
- Those on the Unlimited plan get quicker answers to their questions because they are viewed as a higher priority. Those on lower plans cannot expect any answers on weekends, and you will be waiting at least a day or two during the week.
- If you are on a lower plan, it is unclear exactly when they count one of your emails against your email count and when they don’t. I experienced times where they allowed me to ask a question about the advice they have given or to seek further clarification without it counting against me. Other times, I wasn’t so lucky.
When I was on my last email and I brought up several issues we were still having and asking for advice. I received a reply to my email answering some of what I asked, but not all. I replied reiterating my concern about things they didn’t respond to in my email, and I got a message along the lines of “We’d love to help you, but you’re out of emails so you need to sign up for unlimited to get more help.”
That part was frustrating to me. It would be one thing if I didn’t make sure to ask those questions before I ran out of emails, but I did. I didn’t get an answer, and then they needed me to pay more to get more help.
I decided at that point not to continue with their services.
However, I continued using the advice I had received thus far from them. I didn’t throw it in the trash or anything because I do believe they know what they are doing as sleep consultants. We kept going with it, and eventually I saw more improvement.
It has been about 3 months working the plan now. We still have some issues with the following:
- We left off with the sleep consultant with dropping naps. I was skeptical that a 2.5-year-old should drop his nap, but it did help him sleep better.
- However, now my son cannot stay up later than 5 pm. As you can imagine, this is extremely inconvenient. We have tried getting him to stay up later just 15 minutes at a time, but even 15 minutes causes him to wake up early (and not just a little early, A LOT early).
- If he is up too early, we have no prayer of getting him through the whole day without a nap. I can’t even put him in the car for a 5-minute drive or anything like that–he WILL fall asleep. If he naps even just a small amount, he will drop from 11-12 hours of sleep at night to 8 or 9. And once he is asleep, he won’t wake up for anything. The only way we could get him awake (much to his dismay) was to take him outside into the cold Minnesota winter air. This causes a huge chain of events with his sleep and I’m not totally sure how to handle it.
- However, now my son cannot stay up later than 5 pm. As you can imagine, this is extremely inconvenient. We have tried getting him to stay up later just 15 minutes at a time, but even 15 minutes causes him to wake up early (and not just a little early, A LOT early).
- On a good day, he will wake up at 5 am. Yay! Most days, he is up around 4, but he is getting better at hanging out quietly in his bed instead of screaming his face off and will occasionally fall back asleep.
Is the Baby Sleep Site Worth It? My Recommendation
If you need more knowledge about healthy sleep habits and want articles and e-books that answer your exact questions without having to sort through a ton of information like in regular sleep books, I highly recommend a VIP membership. The member’s area holds a TON of invaluable information.
If you are having a lot of issues with your child’s sleep, I recommend the unlimited email consulting plan or the comprehensive sleep consulting plan that includes unlimited emailing from the Baby Sleep Site. Your help will be faster and you are almost guaranteed to get the help you need.
Due to my experience, I would not bother with any of the lower plans. However, I’m sure there are lots of people out there who got exactly what they needed with those lower plans. You also always have to opportunity to upgrade, so if you want to start with a lower plan and see if you can get by with that, you certainly can. But I do think those that purchase the unlimited plans get more attention and faster replies.
Learn more about the unlimited email consulting plan from The Baby Sleep Site! Getting better sleep takes time, so you might as well get started ASAP!
Have you used a sleep consultant for your kids before? What was your experience like? Let me know in the comments.
My little boy is 3 years old. When he was a baby he would wake up every night 4 and 5 times, sometimes only sleeping for 30 minutes straight. Now he can sleep 12 hours straight and it’s hard to get him to get up most of the times. Is this normal? Thank you for sharing this article.
I’m not a doctor, but it sounds fine to me! 12 hours is a common night sleep length for a 3-yr-old, especially if they don’t nap much. As for being a bear to wake up, that may be something you want to mention to your doctor next time you go in, but I think all kids have their own personalities.
I don’t think I’ve ever heard of a child having such a severe sleep disorder as your Eli. You must have been SO sleep deprived yourself! I believe that the lower-priced plans might be good for those with children with minor issues. However, for first-time moms or those with children like your second, I would certainly opt into one of the higher-priced plans. I can only imagine how frazzled you must have been!
I agree! The lower-priced plans are probably best for families with very mild issues or parents that just need some reassurance. Definitely not enough support for families with a big issue on their hands!
Thanks for such an honest review of this service. I work in family services and sleep/settling (the term we use here in Australia), is probably the biggest problem that families face with their children, so you are not alone. I too had problems with my eldest child waking in the night. I don’t know where you are based but we have hospitals where families can go to sort out sleep problems with their children (families have their own suites and although it’s called a hospital it is purely for child and family issues like sleep.) Our organisation runs one with government funding so that it is free. I often wonder however, how families go when they get home.
It does get easier, the best news is that they all generally grow out of these problems 🙂
That’s awesome, Deb! I do not think we have things like that in America. I did take him to his pediatrician to talk about some options, but it wasn’t totally helpful. :-/ I do wonder if down the line we will do some sort of sleep study, but at this point, they said he was too young. I would love to have access to something like you described! Sounds like a wonderful support for parents.
Hi Holly,
Today (2nd of March) our little boy is getting one year old. As you mentioned, we too struggle a lot to get him to sleep. After many songs (he will listen to songs before sleep but the challenge we need to sing for 30-45 minutes lol) and swing the baby cradle. Again in 15-30 minutes, he will wake up lol.
Thanks a lot for the informative article and this article is a greater help for me. The information you shared about the Baby Sleep Site is insightful. Sharing your experience and information about Eli is very helpful.
Email consulting sounds interesting and it’s on my list. The Good and Bad you shared about Email consulting is very helpful in making my purchase decision.
Glad you found it helpful, Paul!